Part 13 (1/2)

”But it is not to be expected,” he broke out at last, without any reason whatever,--”it is not to be expected that you can contend against everything. You are tired of disappointment, and I don't blame you.

I should be a selfish dolt if I did. If Gowan had been in my place he could have married you, and have given you a home of your own. I never shall be able to do that. But,” with great weakness and evidence of tribulation at the thought, ”I didn't think you would be so cool about it, Dolly.”

”Cool!” cried Dolly, waxing wroth and penitent both at once, as usual.

”Who is cool? Not I, that is certain. I shall miss you every hour of my life, Griffith.” And the sad little shadow on her face was so real that he was pacified at once.

”I am an unreasonable simpleton!” was his next remorseful outburst.

”You have said that before,” said Dolly, rather hard-heartedly; but in spite of it she did not refuse to let him be as affectionate as he chose when he knelt down by her chair, as he did the next minute.

”It would be a great deal better for me,” she half whispered, breaking the suspicious silence that followed,--”it would be a great deal better for _me_ if I did not care for you half so much;” and yet at the same time she leaned a trifle more toward him in the most traitorous of half-coaxing, half-reproachful ways.

”It would be the death of _me_,” said Griffith; and he at once plunged into an eloquently persuasive dissertation upon the height and depth and breadth and force of his love for her. He was p.r.o.ne to such dissertations, and always ready with one to improve any occasion; and I am compelled to admit that, far from checking him, Dolly rather liked them, and was given to encourage and incite him to their delivery.

When this one was ended, he was quite in the frame of mind to listen to reason, and let her enter into particulars concerning her morning's efforts, which she did, at length, only adding a flavor of the mysterious up to the introduction of Miss MacDowlas.

”What!” cried out Griffith, when she let out the secret. ”Confound it!

No! Not Aunt MacDowlas in the flesh, Dolly? You are joking.”

”No,” answered Dolly, shaking her head at the amazed faces of the girls, who had come in during the recital, and who had been guilty of the impropriety of all exclaiming at once when the climax was reached. ”I am in earnest. I am engaged as companion to no less a person than Miss Berenice MacDowlas.”

”Why, it is like something out of a three-volumed novel,” said Mollie.

”It is a good joke,” said 'Toinette.

”It is very awkward,” commented Aimee. ”If she finds out you are engaged to Griffith, she will think it so indiscreet of you both that she will cut him off with a s.h.i.+lling.”

”Indiscreet!” echoed Dolly. ”So we are indiscreet, my sage young friend,--but indiscretion is like variety, it is the spice of life.”

And by this brisk speech she managed to sweep away the shadow which had touched Griffith's face, at the unconscious hint at their lack of wisdom.

”Don't say such a thing again,” she said to Aimee afterward, when they were talking the matter over, as they always talked things over together, ”or he will fancy that you share his own belief that he has something to reproach himself with. Better to be indiscreet than to love one another less.”

”A great deal better,” commented the wise one of the family, oracularly.

She was not nineteen yet, this wise one, but she was a great comfort and help to Dolly, and indeed to all of them. ”And it is n't _my_ way to blame you, either, Dolly, though things _do_ look so entangled. _I_ never advised you to give it up, you know.”

”Give it up,” cried Dolly, a soft, pathetic warmth and color rising to her face and eyes. ”Give it up! There would be too much of what has past and what is to come to give up with it. Give it up! I wouldn't if I could, and I could n't if I would.”

CHAPTER VII. ~ IN WHICH A SPARK IS APPLIED.

IT was several days before Bloomsbury Place settled down and became itself again after Dolly's departure. They all missed her as they would have missed any one of their number who had chanced to leave them; but Griffith, coming in to make his daily visits, was naturally almost disconsolate, and for a week or so refused to be comforted.

He could not overcome his habit of dropping in on his way to and from his lodgings, which were near by; it was a habit of too long standing to be overcome easily, and besides this, he was so far a part of the family circle that his absence from it would have been regarded by its other members as something rather like a slight, so he was obliged to pay them the delicate attention of presenting himself at least once a day. And thus his wounds were kept open. To come into the parlor and find them all there but Dolly, to see her favorite chair occupied by Mollie or Aimee or 'Toinette, to hear them talk about her and discuss her prospects,--well, there were times when he was quite crushed by it.

”If there was any hope of a better day coming,” he said to Aimee, who, through being the family sage, was, of course, the family confidante, ”if there was only something real to look forward to, but we are just where we were three years ago, and this sort of thing cannot go on forever. What right have I to hold her to her word when other men might make her happier?”

Ainice, sitting on a stool at his feet and looking reflective, shook her head.